Sepia Saturday 158: Bill Ball and Work Camp 9, Stalag XXID

I'm taking advantage of a longer than usual break from work in the Solomon Islands to catch up with some long overdue blogging on Photo-Sleuth, starting with an entry for my favourite weekly theme/meme/photo prompt - call it what you will - Sepia Saturday.


The Sepia Saturday prompt this week is one of several photographs on the National Library of Scotland's Flickr photostream depicting Scottish soldiers, complete with kilts and khaki Balmoral bonnets, in the midst of New Year celebrations somewhere on the Western Front during the Great War. Outside a wooden hut, presumably their billet, carrying bagpipes, a drum, bottles and kegs, presumably containing alcohol, and even a football, they are probably far enough away from the front lines that they can enjoy their festivities without too much interference from "the Hun."


My own contribution (a recent eBay purchase) likewise shows a group of thirteen military men in front of a wooden hut, but there are few clues in the photograph itself as to the date, event or location.


The reverse of this postcard format photograph, however, reveals a great deal more. Apart from the address, a brief message and a date (January 31st 1942), there is a purple frank which indicates that it was posted from Stalag XXID/9. A series of 18th Century forts in and around Poznan, Poland (Posen was used during the German occupations), together with several labour camps in the surrounding countryside, were used to house prisoners of war (POWs) by the Germans during WW2 and collectively referred to as Stalag XXID.


William Leonard Ball (1914-1945)
Courtesy of Anthony Ball
William Leonard Ball (pictured above) is the "Bill" who wishes Mrs JC Robertson of Ashford Common "all the best" on the back of the postcard, and he is the soldier third from right in the back row of the group, his cap peak partially obscuring his face. His nephew Tony Ball very kindly sent me some background information. Bill was with the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) when ...

... he was captured by the Germans on the retreat back to Dunkirk on the 13th June 1940 and spent the rest of the war as a POW in two camps, Stalag XXID, and Stalag VIIIB. When the war was nearing its end the Germans marched all the POW's [including Bill] across Germany on what was called the "Great March or Death March." On the 29th April 1945 the marching POW's sighted the Yanks and were liberated.

The bulk of Bill's incarceration appears to have been at Stalag XXID. Although the central camp was housed in Fort Rauch, on the east bank of the River Warthe, several other forts were used, and there were numerous other work camps operating at various times during Stalag XXID's existence.


The Prisoner of War, April 1943, Vol. 1 No. 12, p. 9
Courtesy of Jim Wicketts & WWII Memories.co.uk
I've not been able to determine the location of Work Camp 9, denoted by the franking on the postcard, but there are references to it (and a photograph) in the April 1943 edition of The Prisoner of War, the official journal of the Prisoners of War Department of the Red Cross and St. John War Organisation in London. One of the occupants writes in a letter home, obviously passing under the censorial eyes of the German authorities:

To Morayshire B.R.C.
Stalag XXID/9. 16.1.43.
"Our spirits here are very high; everybody has a nice smile for his neighbour, but should the Red Cross cease to exist I am afraid it would be a very different story. We occasionally hear of negotiations that have to be made so that you can send us food and clothing, and I assure you everyone appreciates it."

Stalags XXID (Poznan) & VIIIB (Teschen), western and southern Poland
Courtesy of Stalag Luft I Online by Mary Smith and Barbara Freer
Like Bill Ball, Alan Forster of the 1st Battalion Tyneside Scottish (Black Watch) was a POW at Stalag XXID from 1940 to 1944. He was moved to Stalag VIIIB in southern Poland, where he worked on a coal mine before being forced to march westwards through Bohemia to Regensburg in Bavaria in the early months of 1945, ahead of the Soviet advance.


British POW working party and German guards, near Fort Rauch, Posen
probably c. taken early 1942, Courtesy of Bill Forster
Bill Forster has transcribed his uncle's diaries and these are available on the BBC web pages, WW2 People's War. They are well worth a read, as they give a good feel for the harsh conditions in the working parties at Stalag VIIIB and on the bitterly cold Long March.

He records day by day what at the time seemed most important: food (or the lack of it), the weather, work, Red Cross parcels, letters received from his fiancee, "Bunty" Hancock, and his family ....

A column of British POW's, April 1945
from The War Behind The Wire, by Patrick Wilson (Leo Cooper, 2000)
Courtesy of The Pegasus Archive

Once the trek west began he records the places they stopped, the distance covered, the night's billet, rumours, etc. There are references to bombing raids and occasional atrocities committed by the guards to keep the column of prisoners moving away from the advancing troops of the Red Army.

Alan Forster describes the moment of liberation, which must have been very similar to the experience of Bill Ball and many thousands of other POWs:

Monday April 30
This is the Day!! I shall remember this anniversary all the rest of my life for this morning the Americans arrived to free us. The time was 8.30 ... it is now 7.15 pm & I can't yet quite realise just what's happened to me. We have eaten as we liked, bacon, eggs, milk - all those things which we've starved for in 5 long years. It's more than strange to be able to walk around the fields a free man, to do what one likes without a guard's interference - oh to do everything one wishes, only stopped by one's sense of right & justice.

Lancaster B Mark III carrying liberated British POWS back to the UK, prepares to take off from Lubeck, Germany
Courtesy of Imperial War Museums
From Regensburg Bill Ball's group boarded trains which took them through southern Germany to Juvincourt airfield in north-eastern France. There the ex-Prisoners of War waited to board Lancaster bombers for the flight home, part of the evacuation exercise termed "Operation Exodus."


Clichy Northern Cemetery, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Courtesy of Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Lancaster Bomber 111, serial number RF230-JI-B, one of ten bombers from 514 Squadron commenced the return flight to Waterbeach, England from Juvincourt in France at 12.15 hrs on the 9th May 1945. Not long after take-off the plane crashed into a wooded area 2 miles east-south-east of Roye-Amy and was destroyed by fire, killing all on board. William Leonard Ball and all the other 24 passengers and 6 crew are buried at Clichy Northern Cemetery, on the northern edge of Paris.


Group of POWs at Stalag XXID, Working Camp 9
Bill Ball standing 2nd from left, back row
Courtesy of Anthony Ball
Returning to the postcard group portrait taken at Stalag XXID/9, and armed with a fuller understanding of the conditions prevalent in the camps, it's possible to interpolate further information about the subjects, and more specifically on the day the portrait was taken. A further two group portraits (above and below) include Bill Ball, and were presumably taken on the same occasion.


Group of POWs at Stalag XXID, Working Camp 9
Courtesy of Anthony Ball and The Pegasus Archive
Reports from inmates (see POW Stories) and Red Cross officials indicate that these uniforms, a motley assemblage of tunics, greatcoats and caps, were supplied somewhat sporadically by the Red Cross and German authorities. It is intimated that these group portrait sessions were taken by visiting photographers by arrangement with the camp officials as a PR/propaganda exercise to show how "well" the POWs were being treated. This is from Private George Charlton at Stalag VIIIB/344:

The Germans photographed us and sent the photo home to show that we were still alive.

Sapper Tom Carpenter was at Stalag XIB:

It was about this time that a civilian photographer appeared at our compound. We were each given a board and in turn, our photos were taken with a few details - name, rank and number ... How long before the Red Cross people, family and friends at home would have to wait before notifications of this new status we had no idea, but at least we were now on record as a being.

Both extracts are courtesy of The Pegasus Archive.


Bill Ball (right) and friend, snow under foot, wearing Polish greatcoats at an unidentified POW camp, undated
Courtesy of Anthony Ball and The Pegasus Archive
For me, the poignancy attached to this photographic artefact lies mainly in the fact that it originated, unlike the vast majority of portraits that we see, in such an extraordinary situation, the likes of which most of us are never likely to fully appreciate, let alone experience. Many of our family members who endured such hardships such as service in the front line trenches of the Great War, or internment in POW camps in the Second World War, rarely talked about their experiences, except to fellow servicemen or inmates, and these photographs may be all that we have left. The task of extrapolating the experiences of others - such as the reminiscences on The Pegasus Archive, WWII Memories and the BBC's WW2 People's War - into an authentic story for our own family members is not an easy one, but it is important if we are to understand what made them the people we knew.

A Hoby print revisited

Composite portrait of the Hoby family, New Plymouth, c.1866
Image courtesy of Philip Duke
In part 5 of my biographical sketch of George Hoby, photographer of New Plymouth and Nelson, I included this image of a composite photograph of the Hoby family, taken around 1866. It was sent to me by Hoby descendant Philip Duke, who told me that it was scanned from an original at the Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth.


Taranaki Museum photo index card with "Hoby composite portrait"
Image courtesy of Puke Ariki
I subsequently received a series of images from Kate Boocock, Pictorial Technician at Puke Ariki. The first image, taken from "file card drawers in the research centre," appears to be a Taranaki Museum (succeeded by Puke Ariki in 2003) photo index card with a very similar version of the "Hoby composite image" either printed on or affixed to it. Handwritten in the relevant spaces on the card are a File Number P.2.1436, Negative Number LN 672, the names of the subjects in each of the cameo frames, the number E.C.385 and a note "storage album 2, pg 37." The final note may refer to the location of an "original," but of course this location reference may no longer be valid.


Mounted photographic print of "Hoby composite portrait"
Image courtesy of Puke Ariki
Of much greater interest was a scan of "a black and white copy photograph, mounted on card that was on display in the old Taranaki Museum." I have made the following observations:
- the buff-coloured card mount measures approx. 234 x 296 mm
- the b&w photographic print, slightly smaller than the mount, measures approx. 231 x 293 mm, has three small pin holes at top right, top left and bottom centre, and slight flaking damage to the photographic emulsion at edges and corners
- part of a white rectangular passe-partout frame with rounded corners is visible, internal dimensions approx. 199 x 265 mm
- series of 10 elliptical-shaped cut-out vignetted head-and-shoulders portraits (each approx. 57 x 73 mm) arranged in 2-3-2-3 pattern, and overlapping from bottom to top, on a darker background


Edge of "Hoby composite portrait" frame, compared with typical 1850s/1860s ambrotype frame
The passé partout frame appears to be very similar in design to those sometimes used for ambrotype (collodion positive) photographs in the 1850s and 1860s (example here), probably somewhat more expensive than the standard wooden cases lined with velvet, with the glass positive image mounted behind a brass matt and pinchbeck surround (example here).

The largest format glass plate negative in general use during the 1860s was the full plate, measuring a standard 6½" x 8½" (or 165 x 216 mm). Since the internal dimensions of the frame visible in the photographic print are substantially larger than this, the print is most likely to have been an enlargement. This fact, in combination with the appearance of the photographic emulsion, suggests to me that the print was made some time later than the original composite was produced. It is possible that it was produced when the Taranaki Museum either acquired the original, or had it on loan, perhaps from a family member. The appearance of light and dark patches within the darker background may be due to reflections from a glass behind which the original was mounted.


Detail of "Hoby composite portrait" print
Image courtesy of Puke Ariki
The overlapping nature of the vignetted cameo portraits, as well as the appearance of shadows at the edges of the cameos (see detail above) suggests that the individual head-and-shoulders portraits were originally printed separately using the vignetting techniques that Hoby displayed in other portraits (see Hoby Part 4). They were then cut out and arranged on a plain, darker backgroundbefore being mounted behind glass and in the ambrotype-style frame.


Reverse of "Hoby composite portrait" print card mount
Image courtesy of Puke Ariki
The reverse of the card mount shows a series of label remnants, inscriptions and annotations, obviously created at different times and by a variety of hands, as follows (and not necessarily in the order they were created).
(1) The remnants of a rectangular label are visible close to the top of the mount, its approximate original extent visible from the
(2) What may be the earliest extant inscription is handwritten in pencil:

Mr + Mrs Geo Hoby + family
Mr + Mrs H + the elder members
of family arrived in N.P. from
London, of which they were citizens,
by the "Fatima" in 1851.
The names of family starting from
second row from top + from left to right
Oliver, Amy (Mrs Keeling), George
Clara (Mrs Merridge) Lilla,
Arthur, Percy, Hubert

(3) Handwritten in pencil at the top, probably in several different hands, different again from that of (2) above, is the text "EARLY SETTLERS: groups and reference numbers, "P2/1436" and "LN 672."
(4) Handwritten in black ink, possibly felt tip, at top right, is the number "25."
(5) The list of subjects has been re-written, by a different hand, in black ink.
(6) The reference number E.C. 385, handwritten in black ink, has been added.
(7) A purple stamp, "TARANAKI MUSEUM," is at the bottom of the mount.
(8) A number, possibly "26," is handwritten in black ink close to the bottom edge of the mount, appearing to have been crossed out in slightly different black or brown ink.
(9) A thin, irregularly trimmed rectangle of white paper, measuring roughly 289 x 129 mm and with typewritten text (image above), has been glued by its left hand edge to the back of the card mount. The text - relating to George Hoby junior rather than his father, who died in 1882 - reads as follows:

MR G. HOBY AND FAMILY Page 49 Obituaries
He died on the 4th October, 1927.
The death of Mr. G. Hoby, one of the oldest settlers in the Bell Block, occured in the N.P. Hospital yesterday. Mr. Hoby was in his 85th year. He was one of the earliest settlers in Bell Block and there he had his schooling. As youn g man he found himself in the thick of the Maori War. he immediately joined Captain Deveaux's Mounted Corps and served with it from 1861-1866. Mr. Hoby went right through the Maori War, taking an active part in the famous battle of Waireka.
Trooper Hoby gained the reputation of being one of the most daring fighters in the district. He flirted with danger.
After the way, he continued his military duties, being Captain of the Volunteer Corps at Bell Block for some years after Captain Cornwall had retired. Later in life he carried on a contracting firm and then a land commission business. he was a good type of settler, a fine, hard-working man in his prime, and straight in his dealings. he married Miss H. Chapman whose parent emigrated from England, and who predeceased him by about two years. Mr Hoby leaves eight children, Mrs G.E. Grover (Fitzroy), Mts Motteram (Opotiki) Mrs Wood (Whareroa), Mrs Somerville (Okoia), Mrs Addenbrooke (Ngaere), and Messrs G. Hoby (Nelson), P. Hoby (Tataraimaka), and R. Hoby (Bell Block). Another son Stanley, was killed in the Great War.

Not being familiar with the Taranaki Museum and Puke Ariki cataloguing and refencing systems and practices, I can't comment on the several numbers present, except to say that several different number sequences may have been employed over the years. The handwritten number "26" (8) appears to have been partly truncated, which may indicate that the mount has been trimmed at some stage. The pin holes are probably a relict of its being used for display purposes in the old Taranaki Museum.

Conclusions

An anlaysis of a scan of the mounted photographic print of the "Hoby composite portrait" provided by Puke Ariki has revealed that it is a later copy of a pre-existing composite portrait. The mounted copy print appears to have been produced (possibly by Puke Ariki's predecessor, the Taranaki Museum) by photographing either the framed print or a print of that. The "original" may have been constructed by George Hoby senior himself, by photographing and printing portraits of the family members, cutting out the cameos, and mounting them on a darker background, probably under glass, and then within an ambrotype-style frame. What has happened to that "original" is another matter altogether, perhaps best left to Hoby descendants to pursue if they wish. It may well not have survived, which makes the documentation of this print, possibly the best surviving copy, all the more important.

Treatment of the Photograph as an Artefact

Researching this article has been a timely reminder - to myself as much as I hope it will be to the readers of Photo-Sleuth - that thorough examination and analysis of a photograph as a physical object, or artefact, is often just as important as are discussions about the photographer/originator or the subjects. Such a description will provide a firm base on which all future work can be done, and an analysis will often provide very useful clues regarding provenance, photographers, dates and subjects featured in the photograph. To conduct these examinations, it's obviously best to have the artefact in your hand, suitably gloved, or many details and subtleties may be lost. However, when this is not possible much can be deduced from digital scans, provided they are done properly.

I don't intend to provide an exhaustive list of scanning Dos and Don'ts (perhaps in a later article), but these are the most important things to keep in mind. To produce useful, I strongly recommend that the user familiarise his/herself with the scanner control software, and that the scanning operations be carried out from within the software, rather than using the buttons on the scanner. It just isn't possible to manipulate the scanner parameters when using the scanner buttons.

• Scan in full 24-bit (or 48-bit) colour, even if the photograph itself is black and white.
  
• Always include the full extent of the print, mount and any enclosing folders.
  
• Scan the reverse as well, even if there are no obvious marks or inscriptions.
  
• Scan at the highest resolution (optical, not interpolated) the scanner can manage; a minimum resolution 300dpi is just acceptable, 600dpi better, but 1200dpi is best. Note that the smaller the original, the larger resolution you need to use to capture detail.
  
• Save all files in TIF format, and optionally in JPG format at the same time, although you can easily convert them subsequently.
  
• Number and file the scans meaningfully.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Kate Boocock of Puke Ariki and Philip Duke for their assistance in this project.